WHEN Mel Brooks released his first film, The Producers, in 1968, initial reactions were not good. Writing in The New York Times a couple of years ago, Brooks recalled his response to the critical and box-office drubbing.

"I nearly gave up show business and was seriously going back to college," he wrote. "I figured, become a pharmacist and open a little drugstore back in Williamsburg."

Mel Brooks is remembering his first musical. It was Cole Porter's "Anything Goes" with Ethel Merman. He was 9 years old.

"I'll never forget all those gorgeous songs and those gorgeous lyrics — 'You're the Top' and 'All Through the Night,' " says the 77-year-old Brooks. "And I said to my Uncle Joe, who took me there, I said, 'Uncle Joe, when I grow up, that's what I want to do. I just want to write songs.' And I did. I got to write them."

But Uncle Joe probably never imagined that his Jewish nephew from Brooklyn would create a smash hit called "The Producers," in which a crafty impresario named Max Bialystock stages a musical that glorifies a gay Fuehrer.

"Don't be stupid, be a smarty, come and join the Nazi party," goes the anthem "Springtime for Hitler."

Committing musical comedy in the first degree 'Producers' arrives at Fox for two-week run By WENDELL BROCK for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Your honor, we the ladies and gentlemen of the jury find the defendant, Mel Brooks, guilty as charged. In creating "The Producers," he has committed musical comedy of the first degree and is to be sentenced to life on Broadway without the possibility of parole.

Three years after this verdict was handed down in the form of a record 12 Tony Awards, justice is finally being served at the Fox Theatre, where Brooks' raunchy and ridiculous showbiz sendup arrived Tuesday for a two-week run. The good news is that the tale of Broadway con artists Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom holds up well under the rigorous hard labor of a national tour. Though Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick remain America's most wanted comedic accomplices, Lewis J. Stadlen and Alan Ruck have preserved the letter and spirit of Brooks' rip-roaring, leg-baring, politically irreverent burlesque.

When Reg Livermore was considering the part of the scheming Max Bialystock in The Producers, he watched a pirated video of the Broadway performance, starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, in his lounge room.

In The Man from Snowy River he had to learn how to ride a horse. For his one-man show, Frank - A Life in Song, he eerily mastered the voice and presence of Frank Sinatra. Now, for The Producers, Tom Burlinson has to push the envelope yet again, this time as Leo Bloom, the hysterically timid accountant originally played by Gene Wilder.

You would have to feel hard done by. You get a role in "the greatest musical ever made", you dance and sing up a storm for a media gaggle, but as soon as a little Jewish guy walks out onstage, you are as good as invisible.

OK, maybe not quite. But as much as Melbourne has been looking forward to the Broadway-conquering musical, The Producers, yesterday it was the show's creator, 77-year-old Mel Brooks, that everyone was most eager to see during a sneak preview before Saturday night's official opening at the Princess Theatre.

Mel Brooks is remembering his first musical. It was Cole Porter's Anything Goes with Ethel Merman. He was nine years old.

"I'll never forget all those gorgeous songs and those gorgeous lyrics - You're the Top and All through the Night," says the 77-year-old Brooks. "And I said to my Uncle Joe, who took me there ... 'when I grow up, that's what I want to do. I just want to write songs.' And I did."

In the role created for Nathan Lane on Broadway - in the not inconsiderable footsteps of Zero Mostel in Mel Brooks's 1968 cult film - Livermore gets the insistent tune The King of Broadway across with gusto and defiance.

Mr Dreyfuss does not sing, or dance. "It's not the dancing as such I'm worried about," he said, faintly. "It's the knees, ankles, hips, elbows, ribs that I'm worrying about. It will be fine. It will be a platonic ideal of dance. Should I take out an ad, just before the opening, saying 'please do not think you are paying good money to see me dance'?"

Just days before the first West End performance of 'The Producers', Lee Evans – taking on his first toe-and-tune role – found himself without a co-star when Richard Dreyfuss quit the production. Here Evans tells Jasper Rees of his relief when the replacement turned out to be an old friend.

When Mel Brooks’s musical The Producers opens in London this month, audiences will see not just the Broadway show that has won the most Tony Awards ever (12), but one of the best examples so far of a galloping trend: the movement toward fashioning stage musicals out of films. For this particular theatre version, Lee Evans and Richard Dreyfuss play the eponymous producers, inheriting the roles of the Broadway hucksters originated in the 1968 film by Gene Wilder and the late Zero Mostel.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum